


won't be thinking bout anything at all tonight but you

by rarmaster



Series: trust and boundaries [6]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: F/M, XC2 AU, YWKON, it's been fifteen years and a week and they're finally fucking, they love each other so they work it out tho, trying to use sex as a fun distraction from All The Other Bullshit but there's a lot to unpack here, two adults navigating feelings and also each other's bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:58:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23114689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: "Of course I would much rather fuck my wife than think about the Architect—”“Ha! You mean get fucked BY your wife, right?”Or: Kratos and Anna enjoy every inch of being reunited, after fifteen years of being apart.
Relationships: Anna/Kratos Aurion
Series: trust and boundaries [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1386643
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	won't be thinking bout anything at all tonight but you

**Author's Note:**

> direct-ish sequel to _[life is far too short to scream and shout](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21888382)_, aka the smut that was supposed to go in that one before it got. wildly out of my control. LMFAO. 
> 
> title from bastille's _admit defeat_ which is thematically the mood/tone for this fic
> 
> content warning(??): anna has a brief adhd bad brains spiral of the continued "i'm awful for fucking things up and you should never forgive me for that" flavor. it's brief and kratos pulls her out of it pretty quick but if you were here for PWP well. sorry there's feelings with this one. like a lot of feelings. two adults navigating feelings and also each other's bodies. fun times.

“Hey, question, before I forget again,” Anna says. She’s curled up at Kratos’ side, one leg draped over his lap, her fingers idly tracing the ether lines on his bicep. Sitting and talking and cuddling for hours until they fall asleep was _not _something they did, Before, but Kratos admits he quite likes the change. “And I’m sorry in advance because I _know_ you don’t want to be thinking about it—” (_At this, Kratos preemptively groans and squeezes his eyes shut, anticipating what the question is going to be._) “—but if I end up telling Malos about the Architect bullshit is that cool?”

Kratos sighs, again. Runs his fingers up Anna’s side, treasuring the warmth of her bare skin, just to distract her.

“_Kratos_,” Anna whines, as she squirms. “Come on, gimme an answer. It’s fine if you don’t want me to tell him but I think we could both benefit someone else knowing just so we can have someone else to sort our feelings out with on the matter? And he keeps asking and I keep not being able to tell him and—”

“It’s fine,” Kratos says.

“What?”

“It’s fine if you tell him,” Kratos clarifies. His hands are occupied with holding Anna, which—given how much lost time they have to make up for—is not a thing he wants to _stop _doing, so he forgoes rubbing at his temples even though they ache like fire, now. “So long as he doesn’t go announcing it to the world and I don’t have to do any explaining.”

Anna laughs, bright and loud, pulling away from Kratos enough so that she doesn’t deafen him by laughing right in his ear. “Yeah, that’s fair,” she says. She drags her fingers slowly up his arm, then leans in and tucks her cheek against his shoulder again. “If… Jin and Lora end up finding out, too…?”

_Architect, _Kratos wishes they—Kratos wishes _he could stop thinking the word so casually. _He wishes old habits weren’t so hard to break. He wishes just thinking about that sad, pitiful man up on Derris Kharlan, that man who shared his name, wishes knowing that man existed wouldn’t fill him with so much dread, so much anger. And he wishes they weren’t talking about this. But.

“I mean Malos can keep a secret…” Anna begins.

But Kratos _likes _Jin, and he knows Lora can keep a secret when it matters, and it’s unfair of him—when he knows Anna needs to talk out her feelings to get them sorted, most of the time—to refuse to let her tell anyone else but also refuse to talk about it with her. So. Whatever. Maybe one of them can find an answer that’ll tell Kratos how he can stop _thinking _about it, anyway.

“It’s fine,” Kratos says, again. “I don’t care.”

“Kratos…”

“Really, it’s fine,” he insists. He draws patterns against Anna’s hip, trying to give himself something else to think about. The way she melts under his touch and presses up against him solid and warm is a relief, even if not enough of a distraction. He missed this. “If you don’t think them knowing is going to ruin their lives, I don’t—I don’t care.”

Anna scowls at him, concerned. “Okay…” she says, slowly, clearly unconvinced even though Kratos is being wholly truthful. “Are… _you _alright?” she asks.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Kratos says, simple.

Anna makes a face, but boundaries are boundaries, in every part of their lives. So she nods. “Alright,” she agrees, tired and loving. “But you can’t put off thinking about it _forever, _Kratos.”

He could make a jab about how she’s one to talk, but that’s too mean and he’s too exhausted for it, so instead he argues in his own defense: “No, but I can put it off until I have the energy to unpack it.” Hands up her shirt, fingers skimming the side of her breast. (_It would be so easy to shift just an inch and cup the whole breast in his hand, but that might be a step too far, seeing as he hasn’t asked Anna if she minds._) “Besides,” Kratos says, “there’s more interesting things to think about right now, anyway.”

“Mmm…” Anna arches into his touch, her hum tight and deep. “Like what?” she asks, as if she hasn’t pressed her palm flat against his neck, fingers splayed behind his head, the other hand tracing the hemline of his pants.

“Like simply enjoying the fact that you’re here, and you aren’t dead, nor are you some kind of fever dream,” Kratos answers in whisper, his face pressed into her hair. She smells… like the fanciful shampoo this castle suite supplies, but also like he thinks Anna always has—a little sweaty, a little dusty, like the little dilapidated town in the middle of nowhere she called home for so long has been baked into her, regardless of the fact she hasn’t seen it for fifteen years.

He can feel Anna smirk into his neck. “Yeah, I guess that would be way more exciting to think about than the Architect,” she says, slow, and then she twists her head and kisses the lobe of his ear like she _doesn’t know how thoroughly that undoes him. _Kratos’ hips hitch upward against the pressure of her thigh draped across his lap—useless pressure in such a small, brief amount—and bites his tongue, _especially _when Anna continues, words slurring a little: “Fuck the Architect, ‘mirite…”

“Don’t fuck him, fuck me,” Kratos gasps, thoughtlessly.

Anna bursts out into a laugh, short and surprised. Kratos flinches, remembering he promised to wait until she brought it up first, and desperately tries to think with the head on his shoulders instead of the one between his legs.

“Sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t—” he begins.

“No, no, that was a good one,” Anna interjects, still laughing, and she doesn’t sound mad at all. She plays idly with the hair at the base of his neck, other hand sliding up his shirt, dragging her fingers across his skin all maddening and slow. “…do you want me to?” she asks.

She lost him, somewhere.

“What?” Kratos asks.

Anna laughs again, a beautiful sound. She lifts her head enough to meet his eyes. “Do you want me to fuck you?” she says.

Oh.

Kratos stammers something unintelligible, anything remotely resembling an answer having gotten lodged in his throat somewhere. Yes, _yes, _of course he does, but his tongue is thick with the embarrassment of having to admit that when asked point-blank and his chest is a little tight with anxiety, even though he _knows _Anna wouldn’t have offered if she hadn’t wanted to. Anna laughs some more and he wishes it didn’t sound like she was laughing _at _him.

“Well?” she prompts.

“Well,” Kratos repeats, and then mentally scrambles to find words to string together after that one. Anna’s little smirk and her fingers tracing his skin are _not _helping at _all _right now, and neither is the fact that all his blood and all his ether have rushed southwards. “I think- I think it’s—I mean of course I would much rather fuck my wife than think about the Architect—”

It’s a feeble attempt at remaining anywhere close to collected rather than pitifully desperate, but it gets another laugh out of Anna, this one bright and delighted.

“Hah!” Then she tilts her head, her grin smug. “You mean get fucked _by _your wife, right?”

Kratos blushes hot.

“I- I mean, yes, but,” he says.

Anna’s grin is all teeth, her eyes eager. “Do you _want _me to?” she asks again, leaning in. If her fingers get any closer to his core crystal he _will _combust on the spot.

“Yes,” Kratos gasps, breathless. “If- if that’s- if you’re—”

“I know I’ve been taking rainchecks but I’m pretty sure I’m good right now,” Anna assures him, her smile a little gentler. She leans in, presses her forehead to his. “My brain isn’t trying to light itself on fire with its guilt, I’d _also _like to think about something that isn’t you know what, and honestly I’ve really been looking forward to—_holy shit, Kratos_, if you’re going to keep coming that close to groping my boobs you need to just do it already you _son of a fuck_.”

Kratos laughs, startled—he did not have enough space of mind to pay attention to where _exactly _his hands had been roaming—but gladly does as told. He cups her breasts in his palms, gently feeling their give with his fingers, the hardness of her nipples under his thumbs. Anna makes some kind of noise that Kratos loses track of because she picks that moment to shift and better straddle his lap and _mmm. Mm, _alright, her weight against his eager dick is too much, for a second, so much so that when she says words he doesn’t even process them.

“What?” he asks, helpless.

Anna laughs, gentle. “Can I kiss you?” she repeats.

“Oh. Yes.”

She does, deep and slow, scraping her teeth against his bottom lip. Her breath is hot, fills his mouth, fills his lungs—by this point she’s pushed his shirt upwards enough that it’s caught up against his arms, and her fingers find his core crystal. All thought slips away from Kratos’ grasp, fixated on the gentle way Anna’s fingers feel out the hole he carved in his core crystal when he split it with Lloyd, the touch of her curious fingers warm and _good, _and that combined with her weight in his lap and how deeply she’s kissing him is—

_Is_—

Kratos turns his head away to interrupt the kiss, panting for air and for coherency. “Anna, Anna, slow down,” he begs.

She does immediately, hand off his core crystal even if she remains in his lap, but that’s enough for capable thought to return to him. Just in time for him to watch Anna smirk, playful. “What? You’re really that easy, now?”

“It’s been a while—”

“_Please _tell me it hasn’t been fifteen years.”

“No, no,” Kratos assures her. “It hasn’t.” Fifteen years since he’s done anything more than take five minutes in the shower to get it over and done with while desperately trying not to think about literally anything at all, yes, but Anna doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t even want to _think _about it, embarrassing and pitiful as the memories are, so instead he changes the subject: “But I’ll admit it _has _probably been six months, seeing as traveling with one’s son and his friends on a quest to save the world does not leave much time nor need to find five minutes alone to jack off—”

“Okay that’s fair but holy _shit _do you have more self-control than I do,” Anna laughs.

“Just a lower sex drive, I think.”

“Hey.”

Her pout is wonderful. Kratos grins, happy to tease her.

“_Some _of us don’t feel like we’re dying if we go more than a week without sex in some fashion, Anna,” Kratos counters, and Anna huffs.

“Look, I’m valid, alright?” she says, and she’s grinning even if she tries to sound mad. Her hands, never idle, trace down his abs. Kratos exhales breathily, fingers digging into her back as his hips buck up to meet her again, even though it’s pointless at the moment, unless the thing he is hoping to achieve is coming in his pants (_that is not, in fact, the thing he is hoping to achieve_). Anna laughs when he does. “Eager, are you?” she asks.

“Can you blame me?” Kratos says.

Anna hums, thoughtful and loving. “Not really,” she says. “I know we’ve barely started, but I’ve missed this…” Her fingers drag agonizingly, purposefully slow down his body, in a trajectory Kratos knows well because she’s done it a million times. “Can I?” she asks, before her right hand quite reaches down his pants.

And it still… takes his breath away, in ways that it probably shouldn’t, that she asks at all. He loves that, about her. Loves that she asks. Loves that she cares enough to.

And it’s a little bit of that breathlessness that makes him take a moment to speak, even though he knows she won’t touch him until he tells her she can, it’s a little bit of that breathlessness and a little more—his usual slowness, perhaps, along with a little embarrassment, even though he wants this so badly he can barely think. His hands find purchase on her hips. He wrestles his tongue into making sounds despite how beautifully distracting Anna’s hands just inches from his balls is. “I love you,” he croaks, first, and then: “Yes. _Please._”

Anna laughs, lightly. “Love you too,” she whispers back, as she gives him what she promised.

Kratos closes his eyes and surrenders to it, surrenders to the thrill she sends through his body when her fingers wrap around his dick. Down there, her touch is like fire, a consuming warmth Kratos is more than happy to lose himself to—but. _But. _Anna’s fingers fumble, her grasp trembling. She hums, unhappy. It’s not _painful, _she’s not _hurting _him, but her grip definitely lands several inches left of pleasurable.

“Anna?” Kratos asks, cracking his eyes open to study his wife’s face. She’s scowling in either concentration or displeasure. “…out of practice?” he ventures, gently teasing, hoping to lighten her mood.

Anna looks up at him, and laughs, short. “No, I mean,” she begins, then sighs all short and frustrated. “Hold on, sorry.” She lets go of him and pulls her hand out of his pants, wiping it carelessly clean on her thigh. “I just fucking forgot that as far as sex goes, this hand’s only good for, uh, grope titty,” she explains, demonstrating on herself, “and basically nothing else.”

Kratos laughs, tries not to think about how hot watching his wife feel herself is. (_It’s… really hot._) If he actually, _really _pays attention, he can see how her fingers tremble with the strain of curling inward even against her own breast. That… definitely isn’t going to work against his dick, clearly.

“Well,” he begins, and then swallows around his heart hammering his throat. “You’ve got another hand.”

Anna laughs, bright and clear. “I _do_,” she says. “_But._” She quirks her eyebrows upwards, eyes glinting with whatever idea she has, and it sends another thrill through Kratos’ dick. “Actually, I kinda wanna suck your dick,” she says, and,

How _casually, _how _eagerly _she says it completely knocks Kratos off his feet.

Heat floods his face. He ducks his head down so his hair can hide it and so it’s difficult to see Anna through his mess of hair, because—he needs a moment. He needs several moments.

Anna laughs again, loving, clearly enjoying herself. “Oh, holy shit,” she says, voice brimming with fondness and love. “I forgot how cute you were when you blush like this??”

“_Anna_,” Kratos whines.

“What? Can I not call you cute?”

Kratos doesn’t answer, doesn’t have the space of mind to answer—he _doesn’t _mind but he hates how quickly and thoroughly blatant sex talk embarrasses him because it makes the actual doing the sex thing kind of difficult. But- but he thinks about Anna bent over him, her tongue working him over, and his dick strains against the confines of his pants at the thought. Yes, _yes, _of course, _yes, _now if only he could get his mouth to say it—

Anna leans in and kisses his cheek, still giggling. “Kratoosss,” she coos, her breath warm, stirring hair across his face. “Can I _pleaaaase _suck your dick?”

“You’re- _impossible_,” he gets out, fond but mortified. He loves that she asks, but her acting like his permission is some kind of gift is still something he has trouble wrapping his mind completely around. How can someone be so eager to suck dick? (_But then, if Kratos tried to say there weren’t times when he really, _really _wanted Anna to sit on his face, he’d be a liar, so._)

“Can I?” Anna asks, again, and—

All Kratos _really _has to say is yes and give himself over to it, but, he’s getting tired of there being so much clothing between their skin, so: “Yes,” he says, “but first—” and he starts tugging Anna’s shirt up the rest of the way over her head—and it’s a good thing he starts here, because getting Anna out of a shirt when her right arm is all-but dead takes concentration that they might not have been able to manage much later.

“That’s fair,” Anna says, muffled by her shirt—too impatient to wait to talk. Once it’s off Kratos takes it and tosses it off the bed. Before he asks, Anna’s already shimmying out of her own pants—after she’s climbed out of Kratos’ lap to have an easier time of it, anyway. Once they’re off, she tosses them and her underwear to join her shirt on the floor. She looks to Kratos, then, asks: “What about you?”

Well, if he lets her take off his shirt, she’s just going to touch and/or kiss his core crystal and if she does that he’ll come on the spot, so: “Get my pants,” he tells her, and yanks his own shirt off. He’s distracted by that (_and by tossing it off the bed to join Anna’s clothes_) for long enough he doesn’t notice that Anna hasn’t moved until he’s done. He blinks at her.

Anna just sits in the bed next to him, raises her right hand once she sees she has his attention. “We just established I’ve only got one working hand, right?” she says, exasperated—but more tired than upset. “You sure you want me pulling your pants down one-handed, or would you mind doing the honors?”

Kratos flushes with embarrassment, and something else. (_She doesn’t have to say it Like That!_)

“R- right,” he says, and hooks his thumbs into his hemline of pants and underwear both. He hesitates there a second, needing to take a second to breathe. It’s ridiculous he thinks, sometimes, that he has trouble to find the _courage _to do something as simple as this. He’s done this a million times before, had sex with Anna a million times before, and—

Anna watches him, patient, or maybe just enjoying the view, but: “If you changed your mind, I _do _have another hand,” she tells him. And she _means _that, he knows. He also knows that where they go from here is dictated by his comfort level, and nothing else.

—It’s Anna, so he feels quite comfortable, quite safe, actually.

He pulls his pants downwards, breathing a sigh of relief once his dick isn’t being contained anymore. His heart has settled somewhere in his throat, hammering with tight anticipation as he pulls one foot out of his pants, then the other. He doesn’t toss, rather deposits his pants and underwear off the side of the bed, then he shifts and makes himself comfortable, putting one pillow behind his back so he is not at the mercy of the uneven wooden headboard, shoving the rest of the pillows to the side.

Anna tucks her hair behind her ears once with her left hand, and then again, like she’s not sure what else to do with her excitement. Her right hand remains in her lap. Her eyes are bright as she considers Kratos.

“Ready?” she asks.

Kratos nods—it’s all he can manage, right now, other than getting his legs out of the way so Anna has the room she needs. He closes his eyes, wraps his fingers in the bedsheets just so he has _something _to hold onto. And when Anna takes just long enough he isn’t sure his nod was enough for her, he clears his throat and makes himself say: “I am.”

He feels her weight shift on the bed, feels her breath—warm—near his dick. “Let me know if—you know,” she tells him. They’ve had this conversation a million times before (_let me know if I need to stop_) that she doesn’t really need to say it all, even if it has been fifteen years. Some routines you don’t forget. “Safeword’s still lighthouse,” she appends.

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Kratos assures her.

“Just wanted to make sure,” Anna says, bright and loving. Kratos means to tell her he appreciates that, but all he gets out is a grunt of affirmation because her fingers grip the base of him—confidently, this time, meaning she remembered to use her left hand.

She strokes him gently, and Kratos exhales like it’s the only thing he knows how to do anymore, at least until Anna’s lips kiss the side of him and he has to inhale sharply just to get air in his lungs again. He concentrates on keeping his hips from bucking, on remaining very _very _still so she can work, his chest tight with roaring delight all the while. She teases him gently, kindly, presses her tongue flat to the underside of him and drags upwards, and Kratos _whines._

Anna pauses just long enough to laugh, quite and smug. “Looks like I still know what makes you tick,” she mumbles, like it’s her favorite accomplishment.

“_Anna,_” Kratos says, or tries to say. It’s breathy and strangled and he forgets entirely about trying again when her mouth closes around the head of him, sucking sweetly as she runs her fingers up and down his shaft.

Kratos has never known anywhere kinder than these moments; these moments where Anna’s mouth is on his dick and the gentle way she works him over is all that matters. Surely, even here, some of his usual anxieties should still cling to him—after all, sex inherently leaves one vulnerable, but truthfully? It does not even occur to him to be worried. Here, under Anna’s hands, he is totally and completely safe.

Tension ebbs steadily out of him with every passing moment, like Anna’s drawing it out of him the same way she’s drawing him closer and closer to orgasm. It’s been—Kratos even isn’t sure how long, since he’s felt this relaxed, this at ease. He wanted to forget about all of his other worries, and he does, as the world narrows down to nothing more than the heat of Anna’s mouth wrapped around him. He thinks it funny, thinks it beautiful, that for as brash and reckless as Anna _can _be, she is always so soft, always so careful with him. He thinks that, and then the world narrows down far enough that idle thought is not a thing he can do, and

He comes, long and slow, giving himself over to the space where no thought exists at all.

Kratos isn’t sure how long he stays there, but when he opens his eyes his dick, hard with need just minutes ago, is now soft with satisfaction. Anna sits on her knees, watching him, clearly pleased.

“How was that?” she asks.

“Perfect,” Kratos croaks, his thoughts still a little hazy and his voice creaking from wonderful strain of that.

Anna shifts just slightly towards him, that itself a question on its own, but even still she stops once her intent is clear and asks, explicitly: “Can I?”

It’s rote and routine by this point, Kratos thinks as he nods eager and beckons her over so she can curl up next to him, but even so he cannot help but feel a quiet relief that it _is _their rote and routine. Another person might assume permission was granted the moment they started sex, another person might not realize that despite everything there _is _a significant difference in the sensation of having his dick sucked and the sensation of having another body pressed up against his, but even though Kratos himself is often baffled by how there are moments where he can tolerate the former and not the latter, Anna has never done anything less than take him at his word regarding his limits. He loves that about her, more than he can ever describe; loves that even fifteen years apart hasn’t changed this about her, hasn’t made her forget.

Greedily, Kratos digs his fingers into Anna’s skin and holds her as close as he dares, soaking up every inch of where their skin meets, the wetness of her thighs making his mind blur a little with desire even though it’s going to be _several _minutes before his body’s actually quite ready to go again.

“Love you,” he mumbles, cupping her face in his hands, threading fingers through her hair, drawing her in for a kiss before she can quite get words out to answer him, but the noise she makes in the back of her throat, all urgent and delighted, as she kisses him back is plenty answer enough. He commits himself to relearning the shape of her mouth, memorizing the noises she makes as he runs hands down her body, drinking in the way she clings to him like she doesn’t want anything more than this.

She squirms against his body in a way that that is telling enough on its own (_if he remembers correctly_) even without the way she breaks the kiss to say: “Kratos, can you _please_ finger me,” and it’s a request, not a demand, and. He blinks at her, raising his eyebrows in surprise an inch or two, hot arousal sliding down his throat as he takes in the way her pupils are large with desire, voice thick with need. “If I have to wait any longer I think I’m gonna lose it.”

Kratos finds it easier to answer with actions than words, in times like these (_and in general, sometimes, given how often his mouth likes to glue itself shut_) so his answer is to slide his hand down to her crotch as Anna shifts and makes herself more comfortable, sitting in his lap, her back pressed to his chest. He strokes his fingers down her wetness (_and, oh, is she _very wet) and she leans back into his hand with urgency, head pressing against his shoulder as she whines. For all that it has been fifteen years since he last did this, Kratos is grateful that he hasn’t really forgotten what to do.

“Are you telling me,” Kratos remarks, playing back his memories of the past few minutes to think it over even as he asks. He wasn’t really thinking about it, but he’s _pretty _sure that those moments were absent of Anna’s typical whine of pleasure around his dick when she herself comes. “That you didn’t take care of this yourself while you were sucking me off?” It’s a little unusual, and he wonders her reasoning.

“Yeah, well,” Anna answers, breathless and sharp as she squirms better to meet his hand. “We’ve already established that I’ve only got one hand that’s good for sex anymore, and I was very busy using it on you.”

Kratos feels his cheeks get very hot, struggles with words for a moment before all he can get out is a simple: “Oh” of understanding.

“Besides.” Anna tilts her head back to better look up at him, expression hazy, grin wide with all her pleasure as Kratos rubs his fingers over the most sensitive parts of her. “I really wanted you to do it.”

If Kratos wasn’t blushing before, he certainly is now.

“Well,” he says, but it’s difficult to find coherent thoughts—let alone coherent _words_—after hearing Anna say so simply, so earnestly that she _wanted _him to touch her. And isn’t that silly? They’ve been married for so long that he shouldn’t be so thoroughly undone by such a casual admission of her lust, but here he is, here they are. Anna hums, content, her throat rumbling as she melts into him, and maybe it’s just the fact it _has _been fifteen years but Kratos cannot remember how he’s supposed to cope with how undone he is, how easy it is to undo her.

Anna laughs, just a little. She reaches up a hand to run it through his hair, the touch electrifying despite how awkward and short it is. “What was it you said, earlier?” she asks, and the way she talks when she’s so breathless with her pleasure is enough to nearly distract Kratos from the very important task of seeing her all the way through this orgasm. “About wanting to enjoy every possible inch of being reunited?”

He can’t even _answer _that, feeling undone in her arms even though he’s the one holding her. He wraps his free arm around her, pulling her selfishly close to him, burying his face into the crook of her neck and hair, shuddering with her as she bucks every so subtly up to the pressure of his fingers on her clit. She’s here, she’s alive, and she still _wants _him. He wants her, too, more than he can possibly articulate. He wants her, wants to be inside her, wants to bury himself there and surrender everything to her, wants to, _needs _to—

“_Anna_,” he says, desperate, into her neck. He can feel himself getting hard again, and it’s making it very, _very _hard to think.

“Love you, too,” Anna gasps back, fingers digging into the bedsheets as she grips for a lifeline to hold herself steady on the precipice of her orgasm. “_Kratos,_” she whines, and it’s such a beautiful sound. “Just- just a little more, a little—”

And then she comes, trembling in arms, and he trembles with her.

“Missed you,” he whispers, and maybe he shouldn’t, maybe not now, but—how wonderful, how beautiful it is, to experience this again after being so certain he wouldn’t, being so certain she was dead.

“Missed you too,” Anna croaks.

“You just missed the sex.

“_Not _true!”

And Kratos laughs, liking the way she protests, liking the way she twists her head so she can look up at him, squirming a little, her eyes wide and dark and narrowed just a little in her anger. “I mean, okay,” Anna admits. “I _did _miss the sex, but not more than I missed you! And—can we not think about that, right now? Can’t we just enjoy _being here, _together, can’t we just enjoy that we get to do this again at all?”

“Alright,” Kratos relents, because he is being a little mean spirited. There’s no sense letting his thoughts fester in the gaping wound that fifteen years has left between them, no sense avoiding the touches that’ll start healing it.

Anna shifts in his lap so she’s facing him, her weight mostly on her knees but her hands placed on either side of Kratos’ hips so that when she settles her weight she’s leaning towards him, barely touching him but her face near his. Her smile is gentle, a touch cocky. Kratos can’t help but reach up to press his hands into her sides, fingers splayed over her back, drinking up every inch of skin on skin, here and where their legs bump against each other, where her wrists brush his hips. “Besides,” Anna says, breathless, her eyes glinting. “I thought you wanted to just… forget about everything else for a little while, you know? So why don’t you let me do the honors?”

Kratos shivers more than he’d like to admit at the thought, his heart thrumming nervously in his throat, his dick twitching with interesting. “Alright, then,” he tells her, his mouth pulling towards an eager smile, for all that he can’t breathe. Again: the way she grins like his permission for her to touch him is a treasured gift is something he has forgotten how to cope with. He wonders if he ever really did ever figure out how to cope, to begin with. A lot’s faded, in fifteen years. Ah, which… “Just don’t…”

Anna’s shushing him gently before he can get the words out. “I still remember what’s not allowed,” she assures him. “So unless you _want _to go over it again…”

“I trust you,” Kratos tells her, in part because it’s true, in part because he loves the tight little sound she makes in her throat when he does, he loves the startled look she sends him, like she can’t believe he’s saying it. This is a treasure he feels less strange about handing over. “I do, Anna,” he insists, eyes alight as he watches her melt under the words. “I trust you.”

“Okay,” she says, and it’s breathless in an entirely new way. She pauses to tuck her hair behind her ears; it’s cute, that she does that when she’s nervous. Has she always done it? Kratos isn’t sure if he can’t remember because it’s been so long, or if it’s just more noticeable now that she has to take twice as long to do it, left hand moving from one side of her face to the other, instead of being able to take care of both at once.

Anna lifts a hand towards his face, but doesn’t touch him, yet. “Can I?” she asks, and,

“Go ahead,” Kratos tells her, before she’s even really done saying it, pushing his cheek to meet her fingers, closing his eyes as he drinks in the way she brushes them against his skin, gentle, pushing his hair out of his eyes and tucking it behind his ear, not that it’s going to stay there for long, even with how sweat-soaked it is, right now. “Really, Anna, I think I’m up for anything, right now.”

“Yeah, but you like it when I ask,” she argues, knowing. Kratos huffs, frustrated and needy, because she’s _right, _but… That pleased little smile she sends him makes his stomach flip-flop, and she leans in, fingers playing idly with his ear as she asks, mouth just a breath from his skin. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Kratos gasps, because she won’t until he says it.

Anna kisses his jawline, loving and slow, her fingers knotting into his hair to gently pull him deeper into it. Kratos exhales, long and breathy, trembling as she pulls her lips away just long enough to shift a little downwards, tugging his head back so she can scrape her teeth along the underside of his neck. The action expels all the remaining air from Kratos’ lungs, his hips bucking upward in a fruitless attempt to meet her even if she is bent over him like this, his dick throbbing for how little attention she’s giving it.

“_Anna_,” he chokes, and she laughs, loving, gently pressing her free hand against his chest to hold him down—more of a suggestion to stay put than a demand for it, something that easily turns into her just using him as purchase to steady her own weight, which he doesn’t mind, so much.

“Let me take my time, okay?” she asks into his skin, petting his hair. If it weren’t her dead hand on his chest, he’s pretty sure she’d be stroking his ether lines, too. “You wanted a distraction, and I wanna treat you, a little. Make up for it all.”

Oh. No. Hold on a second.

“That’s not…” Kratos begins.

“I mean, I don’t _have _to, if you don’t want to,” Anna interjects, playful and sharp, infuriating, like this is only about whether or not Kratos wants the sex. And of _course_ he does—he does very much so, right now, enough that it’s kind of hard to think coherently about literally anything else, which is also infuriating.

But it’s not about the sex. It’s about that infuriating little spiral Anna goes down too often, punishing herself when she doesn’t need to, because down to her very core she thinks she deserves it, for fucking up. It’s about the infuriating little spiral she’s been spinning down since they reunited—and no, she shouldn’t get off with no consequences, for something as ridiculous and painful as _deciding to let her husband think she was dead for fifteen years, _but there is a difference between consequences and what’s turning too often into Anna actively seeking punishment, _asking Kratos to punish her._

At least, _at least, _apology sex is not the worst she’s come up with in the past week, but even still, it leaves a foul taste on his tongue.

“Anna,” Kratos says, pushing her gently away from him so he can better meet her eyes. “I _do _want you to,” he assures her, and tries to ignore how red his face goes as he makes his mouth form the words. “But I want you to do it because you _want _to, not because you think you owe it to me. Okay?”

Anna makes a face that she’s made too many times in the past week, the _you’re-being-too-nice-and-I-don’t-deserve-that _face, and she huffs. “It’s not,” she starts, then chokes on the words, hissing in frustration. “I just want to make it up to you,” she whispers.

“You don’t have to.”

“I do, though.”

Kratos sighs, grabbing Anna’s hands, squeezing them tight even as he pushes her away until she’s just sitting on her knees in front of him, his legs still splayed around her. “I’m not doing this,” he tells her, tired. “I’m not going to be a part of you getting off to your own guilt, Anna.”

She tucks her head to her chest, hair covering her face, shaking where she sits. “_Fuck,_” she spits, just shy of angry.

“Anna.”

“We were supposed to be enjoying ourselves, and I fucked it up—”

Kratos breathes, slow and deep, squeezing his wife’s hands. She’s going to keep going like this, if he lets her, and he doesn’t want to let her, and… He knows that this is as much her trying to cope with the past fifteen years as much as it is her brain having always functioned like this, so he does his best to have patience with her.

“You didn’t fuck anything up—except- except me, which I asked for,” he jokes, muscling through his usual embarrassment because the way Anna laughs (_startled, distracted, and not at all despairing_) is worth it. “And even if we have to stop here, I _did _enjoy it. It was nice. …wasn’t it?”

Anna sighs, and she squeezes Kratos’ hands back tight enough it almost hurts, but she’s stopped shaking, at least. “It was,” she admits, and she sounds tired, but there’s a ghost of a smile in her voice.

“I’m okay with stopping here, if you want to,” Kratos tells her. Well, he’ll have to head to the bathroom to take care of the boner that’s persisted despite the mood shift, but that’s alright. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I… _don’t _want to, though,” Anna whispers, shooting a guilty little look up at him. “I mean—You’re right, and if I try and take it slow I’m probably just going wind up getting distracted by my guilt but. Stopping here means I’m still gonna have to get off alone and I’d rather come with you and—” She finally stops to breathe, here, then shakes her head. “It’s. Fine,” she bites out. “Either way. If we stop or keep going. I _want _to try and keep going but—your call.”

Kratos hums. “I think… I think there’s… We could compromise, here,” he says.

Anna lifts her eyebrows at him. “Yeah?”

“We could- I mean-” He exhales, scowling at how thoroughly his embarrassment tries to strangle his voice the moment he starts talking about sex explicitly. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “Just fuck,” he says. “No frills.”

“Whhhhhat do you mean,” Anna asks, dragging the sound out, long and slow.

Kratos laughs, embarrassed, turning his head away from her. “I mean- If you- If you wanted to- to sit on my dick, and if you think that’s not going to be so complicated as to get you all wound up with your guilt, I definitely…” He swallows. “I wouldn’t mind that. It’d uh.” He coughs. His face is burning. “I think it’d take care of us both pretty quick.”

“That’s… true,” Anna admits, slowly, laughing. “I don’t know how to feel about the fact all this talking hasn’t killed either of our boners yet, though.”

“Horny bastards, the both of us,” Kratos mumbles, ducking his head down so his hair will hide how red his face gets when he says it.

“Holy _shit_,” Anna swears.

“What?”

Kratos shifts just so he can look at Anna through his hair, taking in the way her expression is caught somewhere between delight and horror, her mouth wide open.

“I—_swear, _you were never like this before,” Anna says. “And I absolutely do not know what to do with you when you’re this openly horny??”

“Well. You _could _fuck me.”

“_Kratos!!_”

“What!!”

Anna keeps grinning at him, startled and clearly enjoying this even if she isn’t sure how to deal with it, and Kratos shrugs, gently, not quite smug but definitely unapologetic. He couldn’t say as confidently as Anna that he _wasn’t _like this Before, because he doesn’t remember. (_Though he does feel like the odds are good this is definitely not something that _never _happened before, despite what Anna claims_). All he knows is that right now, he still _really _wants Anna to ride him until he can’t think anymore, so.

“Okay, well,” Anna says, “I feel a little less awful about still being horny despite being a little wound up with guilt.”

“Like I said, I’m okay with continuing,” Kratos tells her. “I just want you to fuck me because- because you _want _to, and not because you’ve decided you owe it to me, as an apology. If you think you can do that, and you want to keep going…” He smiles at her, gentle. “But _you’re _the one in your head, Anna. If you don’t think you have the right headspace for it, then…”

“No, no,” Anna starts, shaking her head, and then she stops and makes a face, probably realizing how vague of an answer that was. “I mean—I think I’m okay. The good news about my dumbass brain is I’ve been too distracted by how horny I am to think about anything else and—Like you said, if I ride your dick we’re both gonna be done pretty quick. I think I can manage the, like, two minutes that’s gonna take.”

Her expression is more thoughtful than anything else, though she sends Kratos a quick smile, eyebrows quirking upwards. “You wanna do this?” she asks.

Kratos nods, shaky. “If you’re sure you’re up for it,” he hedges, doing his best to not let how badly he wants to be fucked dictate this conversation. “Just promise me that, if you need to stop—”

“I’ll say so, promise,” Anna says.

Kratos relaxes, trusting her to make good on that promise. He squeezes her hands one more time, then lets her go. “Okay,” he says.

She flashes him a sharp, playful grin. “You ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

Anna starts to move, and Kratos holds his breath in anticipation. His skin is flushed, his dick throbbing almost painfully now that he can spend any attention on how badly it strains for _something, _stimulation of _some _kind. Unfortunately, Anna hesitates before she’s shifted her weight more than an inch, seeming to reconsider. Whether she wants to do this or not…? That’s alright, if she is.

“….y’wanna lie down, actually?” she asks, and Kratos realizes she’s examining their current positions, and not the bigger picture of the situation. “Like, this works if you’re sitting, but I know it’s a little more comfortable if—”

“Fair point, actually,” Kratos interrupts. Anna climbs out of his lap, shoves the pillows he pushed aside earlier towards him when he reaches for them. It takes probably less than a minute of maneuvering before he’s got a pile of pillows to lean back on rather than just the one, and he settles into it, lying significantly more prone than he was before, even if he’s still _somewhat _propped up. “How’s that?” he asks, trying not to blush as he looks to his wife for her opinion, even though it’s a futile effort. He’s been at a permanent state of blushing since they started.

“Looks good to me,” Anna says, and it’s the same tone she says everything else in, but the way her eyes trail over him a second longer than he’s sure they need to make his dick jump. “Again: you ready?” she asks, before she gets anywhere close to touching him. (_She’s right. He _does _like it when she asks._)

“Yeah,” Kratos answers.

Anna shoots him a little grin and climbs on top of him, straddling his hips, and, she’s so close, she’s close to him, so close and it burns. Kratos digs his fingers into the disheveled bedsheets to hold his composure, wanting to wait for her, knowing it’s not going to go how he wants it to if he just thrusts towards her thoughtlessly before she’s lined up.

Her hand closes around the base of him, and he jolts. “_Shit_,” he swears, and then: “Keep going,” before Anna can ask. His throat is tight and her touch is like fire, delightful and burning and yet not enough all at once.

Anna reaches her other hand between her own thighs, probably to hold the lips of her pussy open, and then—“Fuckin hell,” she spits, just a second later. “Forgot this needed two hands.” Kratos considers offering to help, but: “Hold on,” she says, and swaps her hands, and—_again, _the grip of her dead right hand around the base of him is clumsy, nowhere near confident due to all the dexterity she lacks, but it’s enough to hold him steady as she lowers herself, and—

_Oh_

_Oh oh oh oh oh oh_

“_Fuck,_” Kratos wheezes, back arching and hips snapping upward to bury himself the rest of the way inside Anna. Anna gasps, deep and raw and wordless, sound dragging itself from the deepest part of her gut and out her throat. It’s: perfect, is all Kratos can think, to describe the sensation of Anna’s warmth surrounding him, flooding him.

“Fuck. Ing. _Hell_,” Anna enunciates, eyes squeezed shut. Kratos blinks the spots out of his eyes to properly take in her expression. It’s not quite pained, but neither is it completely overjoyed. “_Archi—_fuck. I didn’t say it.”

Kratos laughs, somewhat choked. “I didn’t hear it.”

“Good, I’d hate to kill your boner _now_,” Anna wheezes. She’s breathing heavily, hands finding purchase on Kratos’ shoulders, otherwise remaining very still. Kratos figures he just needs to give her a second, but it’s still somewhat unbearable, being so close to coming and yet also so far. “_Mmmmfph, _fuck, I, uh.” Anna laughs, somewhat shaky. “Maybe forgot to appreciate the fact it’s been fifteen years since, uh.”

“Oh,” Kratos says, suddenly understanding. She’s—_tight _around him. Not enough so for the discomfort to make this unpleasant, not for him_, _but for _her_…? “Do we.” Shit, it’s so hard to think when he’s this deep inside her. “Do we need to.”

“No, no,” Anna insists. She lets out a labored breath, shakes her head to get her hair out of her face. “Just. Gimme a second. This feels _so good, Kratos_.” Her voice cracks wonderfully around his name, and it’s a wonder he doesn’t come right then and there. He moves his hands from the bedsheet to her hips, playing with the texture of her skin as she rolls her hips, dragging the length of him against the deepest parts of her—an action she stops halfway through, wheezing: “Fuck me, _fuck me_—”

“I’m trying,” Kratos says, well aware how unhelpful that is right now.

“Shut _up_,” Anna spits, but she’s laughing.

She digs her knees into the mattress and rolls her hips again, the action sending a trill down Kratos’ spine in such a way he loses track of just about everything else, and. And maybe it was just that he was already so close, or maybe it’s just that he’s always eager to hand himself over to the space where thoughts stop mattering; the space where all that exists is his and Anna’s bodies joined together, the space where he can cry her name and she’ll whine his right back, the space where his heartbeat pounds to the same rhythm Anna rides him to, and—He doesn’t _think, _just lets the pleasure building in his gut fill him, just lets himself drown in Anna’s silky warmth and the way she swears sloppily around the shape of his name.

He lets go, gives everything he has to Anna as she greedily drinks him in.

When coherent thought connects in Kratos’ brain again, Anna is curled up on his chest, legs still draped around him, her face tucked into his neck. Kratos hums, feeling relaxed and satisfied, letting the world start at the give of the mattress below him and end at the sensation of Anna in his arms.

He shifts and presses a kiss into her hair. She jolts, like maybe she’d dozed off, but then hums, content. “Love you,” she mumbles into his skin.

“Love you too,” he tells her, fond. “Thanks for that. It was nice.”

“Yeah, it was,” she answers, sleepily.

And, yeah, she’s definitely going to doze back off if he lets her, but that’s alright. They’ve got time before they _really _need to clean up, and… he doesn’t exactly want to move, either. So he wraps his arms around her, pulls her close, and settles in.


End file.
